First Guitar Lesson

It’s been a long time since I got in the car and drove anywhere except the local supermarket or Richmond. I choose one of the hotter days of the year to do it, and there were works on a road which is notorious for not moving very quickly at the best of times. I made it to the tutor’s place about fifteen minutes late. Fortunately his schedule was not rammed.

We had an introductory chat, and he made approving noises about my Epiphone Les Paul - it does look good. I plugged into a solid-state Marshall (which had a far better clean tone at conversational volumes than my Katana) and we set off on Samba Pa Ti. We had settled on it during our back-and-forth of messages.

This is the first time in many, many years another person has been in the room while I played.

There are many reasons for having a tutor, and many more lessons to be learned than which notes go in what order. Some background: classical music has definitive scores because composers wrote what they wanted playing. The score is the music, all the rest is interpretation. Jazz, rock, folk and most everything else by contrast does not even have a definitive recording. There’s the album version, the version on the later release of out-takes, four versions on You Tube, and the legendary version they played at the (insert name of concert hall here). Very often in these genres there is no sheet music, and if there is, it can be unreliable. So even today, if you want to learn a song, sure look for the sheet music, but you may well find a good recording and learn from that. It’s what the younger jazz players did in the 1950’s.

If you have perfect pitch or a well-trained ear, and an amount of patience. My tutor has a well-trained ear. I made a note to get back to doing ear training.

There are other things as well. Until then I had only suspected that the chords in pop-music sheet music were… ummm… directional. My tutor was quite clear that the scores and tab charts available on the big-name sites such as Ultimate Guitar had enough errors to be an actual waste of time. (I rather like the look of the regular notation on MuseScore, and they are having a June Sale. I may do that.)

Teachers today are very different from they were when I was a pupil. They go in for making encouraging remarks, instead of saving the grudging praise for Christmas. Mine was no different. At the end he told me I was (by the standard of the pupils he has, granted) a “good guitarist”. I’m going to interpret that as meaning that my technique and knowledge of theory is enough for rock ‘n roll. (Which actually has quite high standards these days.) Which I will take as meaning I should concentrate on the music, rather than learning yet more scales or chords.

I came away with four bits of homework: unison bends; ear training; using my third finger to make a barre in the middle of the fretboard; polishing Samba Pa Ti.

The next lesson is booked in.

Finding A Guitar Tutor

I had my first guitar lesson a few days ago.

I have been looking at guitar tutors in my area. There are a couple of websites they all seem to use - tutorful.co.uk and musicteachers.co.uk - and Google found me those.

The tutors are mostly younger (which is ‘under 35’ to me), offer roughly the same range of subjects, and have varying degrees of experience playing professionally and of teaching. All very solid, I felt, but something was missing.

I didn’t want to do ABRSM - I sat my last exam in my twenties and have no intention of doing any more - and I don’t want to learn jazz either. Music-school jazz is journey-man’s music: an all-purpose technique to make familiar sounds over the chords of any song. Which is not to detract from the considerable skills required, and the musical creativity of the very best of the musicians. But that’s the point: all the rest of them cats sound the same. If I want to learn some obscure chord changes and the weird scales that go with it, I can get the music and

Then I ran across one tutor who mentioned “becoming a competent songwriter”, and all doubts left my body. Yep, even if I never actually write a single darn song, that’s what my aim is. I’m a writer of words, not a speaker of them; I’m likely a writer of music (my heavens that sounds pretentious) rather than a performer.

Having found a tutor, you send them a message describing briefly what you are looking for, they reply and you back and forth for a bit, until one of you pulls the trigger and suggests arranging a lesson. So that’s what we did.

More of this to follow.

PRS NF3 SE and Other Thoughts

The PRS NF3 SE was officially released this very day (19/6/24). It’s up for order on Anderton’s and GuitarGuitar. Every YT guitar channel has a review. I’m going to enter it for new product launch of the year 2024. Man, PRS’s marketing people are slick.

Everyone reviewing it said almost the same thing about it - which would okay if they were just talking specs, but they also said the same things about it. Almost as if the PR company sent them a press kit, or they were all watching each other, and nobody wanted to disagree. From what I gather, the PRS online media relations people really seem to know what they’re doing - way better than the Big Two. (And none of the other guitar makers seem to give a darn if anyone reviews their gear.)

However, when they played it? Everyone made it sound different. One reviewer was playing it through a setup almost as clean as a Roland Jazz Chorus, others had some edge-of-breakup, others did a here’s-clean-and-here’s distortion. And it sounded different every time. It didn’t seem to have a sound of its own on which to build other sounds. (And yes, I have liked the sounds of other PRS’s.)

For those who don’t know, a Les Paul sounds like a Les Paul, whether it’s made by Gibson, Epiphone, PRS or anyone else, and whether you’re playing it clean, dirty, at the neck, at the bridge, or whatever. The double-humbuckers have a unique depth and oomph of sound. At the other extreme, a Strat sounds like a Strat no matter who makes it and how it’s played, and it has an neat, clean edge to its sound. Every other solid-body guitar is in-between those two. (And sure, in a blind test no-one can tell the difference between a Russian acoustic ukulele and an American-made Les Paul through a Marshall stack, but that’s just science…)

On paper, I liked the idea of the NF3 SE. SE means it’s the sub-£1,000 version, NF3 refers to having three narrow humbucking pickups. It’s an S-style body with a five-way selector switch. During most of the reviews, I could tell the difference between bridge and neck positions, but I wasn’t sure I could notice the change from one position to the next.

As I’m learning my way round the effects in the HX Effects - what works, what doesn’t - I’m coming to see the guitar as a note-generator, rather than the origin of all tone. In that sense, what matters is the strength of the signal and the overtones it generates.

The day before the NF3 SE reviews, I had three guitars on my list: Fender / Squier Jazzmaster; PRS John Meyer SE; PRS NF3 SE. That has gone down to two now. Amps, if you’re wondering, are between a Fender Blues Junior or a Roland JC-22. At low volumes, the amp can’t be used to get “tones”. So the idea is to have a clean amp (or studio monitors or FRFR speakers) into which to push already messed-up signals from the effects units.

I do think about gear upgrades, but every time I get even close to buying anything, I have a serious session with the HX Effects and get better tones out of the current gear.

Right now I have some monster tones - but that’s another story.

Complexity Is Stifling Growth

It’s not the economically inactive that puts growth at risk. It’s having an economy with jobs that are skewed against the distribution of skills in the population.

The following argument is sketchy, and it uses IQ as a crude indicator of skill levels. Key points: population average is 100 points, standard deviation is 15 points, and inter-test variation is 5. Lots of other personal qualities affect someone’s life-chances, as do the circumstances of their upbringing. People with high IQ’s can be a**holes or decent people, as can people with lower IQ’s. Differences of 3 or 4 points are meaningless, differences of 10 or more are real. The sweet spot for a business manager is around 115 (+/- 5). As a very rough guide, under 85 has a hard time fitting into the economy, and over 120 starts to have a hard time fitting into the social world. Moral character is entirely independent of IQ. Okay?

15% of the UK population 16-64 who are economically active (total 32m) has an IQ of 85 or less, which means there are a very small number of jobs in an industrial / knowledge-work economy they can do. That’s 4.8m people who aren’t quite up to the job requirements, training or not.

No matter how good the economy, there’s always what the economists call frictional unemployment due to firms moving, going broke, having hiring freezes and other such stuff. That rate varies with the health of the economy: it’s around 1m now. Also there are some jobs for people under 85, but I’m going to pull a number of 1.5m from the air.

This should mean we unemployment of around 4.8m + 1m - 1.5m = 4.3m. (1)

Instead it is around 1.5m. Which means the economy has something like 2.8m jobs being done by people who aren’t quite up to it, or even are a long way off being up to it. That’s slightly over one in eleven workers, and it will be spread across the ability levels and personal temperaments.

That’s where the feeling you’re talking to someone who doesn’t quite catch on to whatever it is they should be catching on to.

So this economy is doing a fabulous job of employing people. It has generated so many jobs that employers have to hire down to a non-trivial extent.

But, we have grown the complexity of the products, services, processes, laws, supply chains, finance, and so on, past the point where we have enough people to handle that much complexity.

So the real challenge for the managers and law-makers of the future is to simplify everything so that regular people can handle it.

And to do so without embedding the complexity in computer systems that can be hacked or disabled, and which will be un-maintainable by regular people.

You’re welcome.



(1) Sure we could adapt the figures for immigration, but it would not make a big difference. The 3m immigrants from the EU are skewed to the right, but there are 4m from elsewhere who aren’t.

Worklessness Risks Growth

In their 12th June edition, the Telegraph ran an article with the headline “Worklessness risks growth after hitting 13-year high”. The writer, Tim Wallace quoted Tony Wallace of the Institute of Employment Studies, and Alexandra Hall-Chen of the Institute of Directors, as saying that this was a Serious Issue the like of which had never been faced by the UK economy since, well, the last time.

Wallace should have told them, and the ONS (whose skills at data collection I don’t question, but who are no better than anyone else at providing interpretation and context), to hop on a bus.

For one thing, comparisons with previous highs some random period in the past are meaningless: there’s always a time when it was a) this bad, b) worse, c) better. Choose your year. I’ll choose 1995, because no-one was complaining about worklessness then.

Next, always check that the quantity they are talking about is what you think it is. “Workless” in this article means “economically inactive according to the ONS Labour Force Survey”. Its age range is 16-64.

Wait. 16? Aren’t they still at school? Indeed, isn’t half the population between 16 and 21 at school, college or university? Yep. Then, according to you and me, they aren’t “economically inactive” - they are doing what the economy needs them to do. Guess how many students there are in 9.5m “workless”? 2.65 million. So really, there are only 6.84m “really workless” people. In 1995, there were 7.16m “really workless” people.

In 1995, 2.87m people were looking after their family and home - which is work whenever I do it, so let’s correct for that as well. In 2024, that was 1.73m, so that in 2024 there were 5.11m “really workless” people and in 1995 there were 4.29 “really workless” people. The difference is a combination of long-term sick and “other”, as advertised by the press.

However… in 1995 there were 25.14m people employed, 2.47m unemployed, and 4.29m really workless. In 2024 there were 32.9m people employed (!), 1.42m unemployed, and 5.11 really workless. The number of 16-64 year olds went up by 16%, the number employed went up by 25% (!), the number unemployed went down in absolute terms, and the number of really workless went up by 19%.

So this economy, compared to the heady days of 1995, is employing 7.7m more people, has reduced unemployment, supports more students, has more women out at work, and someone thinks that 0.8m people being long-term sick is going to hold it back? I don’t think so. It’s 2% of the working population, which assuming they all worked and contributed average GDP / head, would be an increase in GDP that could be wiped out by one lousy decision in the Treasury or the City.

Vote For Someone Who Didn’t Vote For Lockdown

July 4th.

Isn’t that a holiday in the USA?

It’s also a General Election here.

My MP will get returned because they have a majority as large as the population of Sweden, and under electoral law this constituency must return the Labour candidate.

So I’ve always been able to vote for whoever in the secure knowledge that it will make absolutely no difference at all.

But this time, I will append a silent protest.

I will not vote for anyone who voted for lockdown in March 2020.

All of them must lose their seats. It’s the only thing politicians understand.

The “Intimate Relationship”

Therapists mostly see ordinary people who are unhappy with their lives in one way or another that falls short of the distress needed for psychiatric treatment. One of the things these people must have in common (otherwise why would they see a therapist?) is the lack of anyone they can trust, feel comfortable and safe with, and can share their innermost thoughts, fears, hopes and dreams, without censure or judgement. Since that is what therapists say they provide(1), it seems reasonable to conclude that if they had such a friend, they would not need a therapist. Since the client isn’t going to carry on with therapy indefinitely, it makes sense to suggest that they find someone like this.

Hence the emergence of the idea of the “intimate relationship”, which provides “emotional intimacy”.

This represents a yearning many people have when going through periods of insecurity and doubt. The benefit is supposed to be that “a problem shared is a problem halved” and “misery loves company”, that, having unburdened ourselves, we will go forth and do something about it.

A number of observations.

These relationships require trust, and that’s earned, not given. Opportunities for people to show that they are trustworthy, or to see that someone else is, are few and far between. Not because this is a jungle of a world, but precisely because it isn’t: when everyone is well-behaved, watches their language to avoid offence, only expresses views that conform to the standards of the time and place, and otherwise goes-along-to-get-along, nobody has any idea what anyone really believes and hence if they can be trusted. The risks of badly-chosen trust can run from losing one’s job to being ostracised by one’s family, and those just aren’t risks worth taking.

(Better, perhaps, to go to someone who is bound by confidentiality, can be sued if they break it, and knows nobody you know. That’s what therapists really get paid for.)

The conversations may consist of one person venting while the other listens, and there’s no intention to solve the problem. At worst this allows the venter to remain in a situation they should really leave, so that the listener is put in the position of enabling some dysfunction in the venter’s life. Almost as bad is that the venting is a drama pay-off for the venter, putting the listener in the position of a passive one-person audience to what is really a soliloquy. Most people, if they suspect they are just there for the talker to vent, will get themselves out of it - sometimes with the remark that “it sounds like you need to see a therapist”.

The speaker may not be talking about what they need to be talking about, and do not know what they need to be talking about. We can usually sense this, even if we don’t know the details. It reduces the listener to being polite and helpless, which is not something people usually want to be, and the usual way out is to sympathetically admit that they can’t really help, and maybe the speaker should see a therapist.

Whoever we share with must understand what we are talking about, and we must know they understand. We need to know they have been through something like we are going through, or have been through, and also that their circumstances are enough like ours that whatever it was had a similar effect on their lives as it did on ours. Hence the phrase “you weren’t there, you couldn’t know”. Only those who were there, who have been through the same thing, can know, and so understand what our words mean. To everyone else, we may as well be speaking in Mandarin: they won’t know about the details, and it’s the details that matter.

For some people, such experiences create a sense of alienation: no-one who wasn’t there will ever understand them. Communication with people who weren’t there will never be much above the level of swapping mundane facts or talking about the weather. Even if we never meet other people who “were there”, the possibility of that conversation remains as the standard by which all others will fail.

Relationships are “for-something-together”: playing seven-a-side, raising children, installing double-glazing, cooking food, watching a movie, talking about a subject of mutual interest, baby-sitting each other’s children, spotting each other at the gym, and so on. Venting-and-listening might be on this list, but if it’s the whole relationship, we’re probably looking at a narcissist taking advantage of a co-dependent.

So the “intimacy” is only part of the relationship: in other words, it’s someone you have-to-do with for one purpose, and you also trust them enough to talk about whatever-it-is, and you think they will be sympathetic to such a conversation. It’s not the relationship that’s “intimate”, it’s some conversations you have as a consequence of the relationship.

If you have someone in your life like that, you’re lucky. Use the opportunity too often, and you may lose them.



(1) I’m not being cynical. If you reveal un-Islamic thoughts to your Islamic therapist, or un-liberal thoughts to your liberal therapist, you will be subject to ideological correction, because that’s what they think you came to them for. That’s not what you go to your “intimate friendship” for.

Happy Birthday To Me

I was 70 last month. I celebrated on the day itself by having a blood test (at 08:00!) to make sure I still had the necessary hormones and chemicals in the right proportions. Seems I do.

The month was filled with dentistry, osteopathy, and having my garden hard standing re-surfaced, so I was too busy to linger long on the symbolism of passing 70.

When I was a young lad, there weren’t many men over 70. Men died pretty briskly after retiring, mainly because they had been doing jobs that left them physically depleted and, as we now know, stuffed full of asbestos and other such damaging substances. For men, 75 was old, 80 was almost un-heard of, except amongst the very well-off and some Chelsea Pensioners.

70 doesn’t have any significance. It’s just one more post-retirement year marked by a slow decline in one’s energy levels. 80 is the new 60 - the age at which one can expect to live five more years (or not).

Ten years. When I was twenty, that was a lifetime.

Maybe it still is.